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Michael Idov and Matt Taibbi on Obama’s Foregone Historic Win, and the Morass It Will Land In
'Rolling Stone' columnist Matt Taibbi and 'New York' writer Michael Idov discuss why John McCain is “one of the worst” presidential candidates ever, Russian glee over American's problems, and what happens after a possible President Obama is hammered for what he doesn't manage to achieve.
Posted 10/10/08 in Daily Intel : Instant Politics
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Imus Says He Was Defending ‘Pacman’ Jones, Critics Not Sure They Buy It
We open up the can of worms again and ask you what you think.
Posted 06/24/08 in Daily Intel : In Other News
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The Downfall of the SockObama Foretells the Downfall of America
The makers of the SockObama proclaim that if America can’t handle the depiction of a black presidential candidate as a monkey, then we, as a country, are doomed.
Posted 06/18/08 in Daily Intel : In Other News
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Makers of Racist Obama Monkey Would Like to Transcend Racial Bias
We almost couldn't believe it when we saw thesockobama.com, a Website peddling an “Obama” monkey doll.
Posted 06/13/08 in Daily Intel : Early and Often
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Nora Ephron Doesn't Like White Men
Despite having married three and written movies about dozens of them, she's tired of the genre.
Posted 04/21/08 in Daily Intel : In Other News
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Madonna Constantine Falls From Grace
When a noose was found tied to the office door of Teacher's College professor Madonna Constantine back in October, the university rallied around her. "I will not be silenced," the professor and author of several papers on multiculturalism said in a statement to media at the time. The crowd around her applauded, but no doubt some were rolling their eyes. As it turns out, Constantine has been the focus of a plagiarism investigation by the college for the last eighteen months, and they've now announced that they've found “numerous instances in which she used others’ work without attribution in papers she published in academic journals over the past five years.” Awkward! Constantine, unwilling, it seems, to let go of her status as the Rosa Parks of Morningside Heights, sent out an e-mail to students and faculty calling the investigation “a conspiracy and witch-hunt.” “I am left to wonder whether a white faculty member would have been treated in such a publicly disrespectful and disparaging manner,” she wrote. “As one of only two tenured Black women full professors at Teachers College, it pains me to conclude that I have been specifically and systematically targeted.” Exactly how other people were responsible for the fact that Constantine totally plagiarized from her own students is unclear. Columbia Cites Plagiarism by a Professor [NYT] Earlier: Columbia Students Have Something Noose to Be Indignant About
Posted 02/21/08 in Daily Intel : In Other News
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Bill O’Reilly Doesn’t Want to Lynch Michelle Obama Until He Is 100 Percent Positive She Hates America
The folks over at Media Matters, who spend all day sifting through transcripts of conservative pundits' radio broadcasts looking for faux pas, have struck pay dirt yet again. Where? The O'Reilly Factor, of course. Apparently, yesterday some old biddy called up ol' Bill's radio show, all bent out of shape about Michelle Obama's saying on C-Span that "for the first time in my adult lifetime, I'm really proud of my country." For the first time? The caller was aghast, like, How dare Michelle not be grateful for the good things America has done for her people! What about Brown v. Board of Education? The right to vote? Hell-o. "I have a friend who had knowledge of her and said to me months ago, 'This is a very angry,' her word was 'militant woman,'" the caller, whose name was Maryanne, told O'Reilly. His interest was piqued. "What I want you to do then, Maryanne… I want you to stay on the line," he said. "If indeed Michelle Obama is angry about something, if she has a history, we would like to know that." Then, tamping down his excitement, O'Reilly muttered that of course they'd have to check the facts first. After all, "I don't want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there's evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels.
Posted 02/20/08 in Daily Intel : In Other News
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Kerik-Regan Pillow Talk Revealed!
Now we have a better idea of what pillow talk between Judith Regan and Bernie Kerik might have been like: racist! The city has just settled a suit brought on by Eric Deravin, a former corrections officer who accused Kerik of passing him over for promotions a whopping six times — on the basis of skin color. Of course, this being Kerik, the rest of the story is even weirder: According to the Daily News, Deravin had “successfully fended off a harassment claim lodged by Kerik's former lover, Correction Officer Jeanette Pinero.” Which, to our uneducated eye, gives Bernie an entirely different motive for fucking him over. But hey, the case is settled, Deravin is $125,000 richer, and we get to call Kerik a racist. Everyone wins? —Michael Idov Settlement For Former Corrections Officer Who Claims Bernard Kerik Had Race Bias [NYDN] Earlier: Judith Regan Allegedly Made Anti-Semitic Slur [MSNBC]
Posted 11/27/07 in Daily Intel : In Other News
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New York's Racistest?
• The U.S. Department of Justice is suing the Fire Department for discriminating against minorities. A complaint filed in Brooklyn alleges that the firefighter recruitment exam is racially weighted and serves to "weed out" blacks and Latinos. [Metro] • We've said it should take more than greening your mansion to make it into the news. This qualifies: An abandoned upstate steel mill has reinvented itself as a wind farm, a first for the Rust Belt. [NYT] • Peter Braunstein didn't just want to kill Anna Wintour: He also spoke of heading down to New Orleans to head up a gang of angry Katrina survivors, according to a shrink. (Braunstein did briefly pretend to be a hurricane victim to get free food and shelter while on the run.) [amNY] • Subway Superman Wesley Autrey left NBC's Deal or No Deal with $25 after picking the wrong suitcase (the other two held $1 million and $10,000, respectively). No X-ray vision, then. [NYDN] • And there's some sort of conspiracy afoot among the Post, CBS, Amy Fisher, and Joey Buttafuoco to pretend that there's some juice left in the Long Island pair's story — enough, perhaps, to sustain a reality show. Let's not encourage any of them. [NYP]
Posted 05/22/07 in Daily Intel : The Morning Line
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Bruce Ratner vs. the Homeless, Too
• 350 residents were ordered out of a homeless shelter after a parapet fell off a Ratner-condemned building next door. Even the dourest pessimists at Develop Don't Destroy didn't think mass displacement at Atlantic Yards would already be an issue. [NYT] • So that's why the City Council wants to ban metal bats: An assistant baseball coach at East Side's Norman Thomas H.S. allegedly went medieval with one, clubbing two kids over the head for cheering on a rival team. [NYDN] • Not a week after a court confirmed activists' right to film cops at protests, the NYPD is asking a judge to give officers back the right to film protesters. Everyone's a damn auteur in this city. [amNY] • Asian American groups are steadily mounting an Imus Redux; CBS Radio is under pressure to can shock jocks "JV and Elvis" for prank-calling a Chinese restaurant with "shlimp flied lice" jokes. Shouldn't we be addressing the larger issue of why prank-calling restaurants is a marketable career option? [MediaChannel] • And Jon Corzine says "I'm the most blessed person who ever lived." Point taken, J.C.: The man is walking and talking two weeks after meeting a guardrail at 91mph. [WNBC]
Posted 04/27/07 in Daily Intel : The Morning Line
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Wherein We Defend German Racism
Governor Spitzer, Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, the Reverend Al Sharpton, and other local leaders are up in arms about a German military-training video that makes an offhand racist reference to the Bronx: An instructor orders his charge to imagine something along the lines of "You're in the Bronx. Three black guys come out of a van and insult your mother." The recruit responds with a bleeped-out curse and a furious machine-gun volley and is instructed to yell louder. A German TV station got hold of the video and broadcast it disapprovingly; naturally it's made its way to YouTube. Now Carrion is demanding an apology and Sharpton is trying to get Bush involved.
Posted 04/16/07 in Daily Intel : In Other News
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Don Imus and Other Great Moments in Bigoted Slurs
And so the "nappy-headed hos" remark has cost Don Imus his job. The final denouement, which came with CBS Radio's canning the I-Man last night, a day after MSNBC dropped the simulcast of his show, has seemed inevitable for most of the week, as protests had intensified, advertisers had balked, and the great and august Ana Marie Cox had announced she would never again deign to appear on such a juvenile broadcast. (Cox first gained fame as the editor of Wonkette, where she was known for her anal-sex jokes.) But it has not always been thus; many, many public figures have uttered bigoted slurs and lived to tell the tale. After the jump, a look back at some Great Moments in Bigoted Slurs.
Posted 04/13/07 in Daily Intel : Intel
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But Women Who Don't Use the Word? They're Just Fine With It
Currently on CNN.com:
Is it wrong of us to think this is by far the most amusing headline to come out of the Imus mess? It probably is. Sorry. CNN.com
Posted 04/11/07 in Daily Intel : In Other News
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Bye, I
• MSNBC and CBS are taking Don Imus off the air for two weeks, prompting the Post headline "Don Ho" (you have to think about that one for a minute). Seems calling Al Sharpton "you people" didn't help things. [NYP] •It has begun: Downtown's Community Board 1 is absolutely outraged by JPMorgan Chase's plans to build a skyscraper cantilevering over a nearby park. Joining the pile-on are the unions miffed by Chase's demand for fat relocation incentives. [MetroNY] • Ex–New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey is suing his estranged wife Dina Matos, ostensibly not to stop her from promoting a tell-all but to make her stop dragging their 5-year-old daughter to the readings. He also accuses Matos of, yup, homophobia. [NYP] • East Hamptonites are divided in the wake of an over-the-top immigration raid. Armed agents in bulletproof vests pushed through the doors, SWAT style, in search for the homeowner's estranged husband. [NYT] • And will a Brooklyn Law student be booted after appearing in a Playboy TV video nude and playing with judge's gavels? Probably not, but come bar-exam time, the Committee on Character and Fitness will have some research to do. [NYDN]
Posted 04/10/07 in Daily Intel : The Morning Line
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Pol and Poet Wouldn't Support N-Word Ban
Felipe Luciano ran for City Council two years ago, and he lost by only sixteen votes. Which is too bad, because if he'd won, he likely would have been the only council member to vote against the "N-word" moratorium that passed unanimously yesterday. A generation ago, Luciano wrote a poem that he has since performed widely: "Jibaro, My Pretty Nigger." Jibaro refers to a person from Puerto Rico, and Luciano, who grew up in Harlem, calls himself a black Puerto Rican. "I used the word nigger to defuse its negativity," he told us by phone. "When Puerto Ricans call each other the Spanish word 'negro,' it reflects feelings of love. I think New York blacks picked up 'You my nigger' from Puerto Ricans."
Posted 03/01/07 in Daily Intel : Intel
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American Graffiti
• The City Council has approved — 49-0 — a symbolic ban on the N-word; the ban carries no penalties but already seems to be in effect, seeing that not a single publication covering it can bring itself to print the slur. [Newsday] • And on the same day, a man pleaded guilty to scrawling "anti-Semitic slurs" — also unspecified — on cars parked near a Queens synagogue. City Council, get bannin'! [amNY] • The Splasher, an anonymous culprit who defaces street art with violent handfuls of paint, has earned a chin-scratching Times profile. As expected, at issue is the line between "respectable" graffiti (Banksy, Swoon) and Splasher's vandalism. Or is it art? [NYT] • OMG Madonna's collection at H&M! We're more than a little perplexed why this is front-page material to the Daily News, so feel free to point out some sort of Mort-Madonna link we've accidentally missed. [NYDN] • And in a particularly bizarre round of Mad Libs, a 46-year-old dominatrix … was busted for weapons possession … in a $3 million Bedford Hills mansion … owned by an Orthodox rabbinical school. [NYP]
Posted 03/01/07 in Daily Intel : The Morning Line
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Reporta, Please
It's hard being a reporter. Sometimes you have to cover wars. Sometimes you have to accept silly assignments. And sometimes you have to figure out how to write about a universally reviled term without actually using the term itself. As the City Council marches toward a moratorium on a word that, according to the proposed resolution banning it, means "a lazy person with no self-respect or regard for family," we checked on how news accounts are creatively avoiding the N-word.
Posted 02/27/07 in Daily Intel : In Other News
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Speak, Models!
FASHION • Turns out models can speak — at least in Ridley Scott's new Prada movie. [Fashionista] • Bottega Veneta has designed the interior of a penthouse suite at the St. Regis. [British Vogue] • Model Paulina Porizkova has joined the cast of Dancing With the Stars. [Flypaper] • Naomi Campbell left Premier Models, where she's spent most of her career, for IMG. [All Company News]
Posted 02/23/07 in Daily Intel : Company Town
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V-Day in Celebland
Spike Jonze and Drew Barrymore spent Valentine's Day together. Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban spent Valentine's Day apart. Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick spent Valentine's Day together, but seemed "distant." Mike Myers, Hugh Jackman, and Joan Collins all spent Valentine's Day at the Waverly Inn, though, presumably, not together. Mike Bloomberg's favorite singer is Aretha Franklin. Liz Smith says Steve Schwarzman's birthday blowout could have cost as much as $15 million.
Posted 02/16/07 in Daily Intel : Gossipmonger
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If You Spun It, Here's How It Would Have Happened
Now that we know Judith Regan was fired from HarperCollins over a volley of anti-Semitic remarks, it strikes us that with the recent bumper crop of Great Moments in Racism — Michael Richards–gate, Rosie-gate, Mel Gibson Über alles — our culture has found a new cottage industry: Awesome excuses for Great Moments in Racism. And nearly all of them have shown up already in the Regan affair. After the jump, a cheat sheet for spinning your next ching chong.
Posted 12/19/06 in Daily Intel : In Other News
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